What a load of rubbish: Britain is a nation of litter bugs

There was a time when deliberately dropping a chocolate bar wrapper on the street would have led to catcalls of ‘Litter Bug!’ from your peers.

A shameful head-hang later and you would be collecting the evidence of your folly and searching for the nearest bin.

So what happened? When did picking up after yourself in public become so, well, uncool? Why has destroying our own back yard turned into such a badge of honour?

Because make no mistake: Britons love littering. It’s up there with queuing and talking about house prices as one of our favourite pastimes. Almost two thirds of us are litter bugs, according to a survey by Keep Britain Tidy. However, only 28% are willing to admit they drop their rubbish.

Not only does littering harm the environment and leave us swimming in a sea of our own discarded crap, it costs us a fortune.

In England alone, £1bn is spent a year on collecting litter. You might think you don’t pay for the clean-up operation, but where do you think your council tax goes?

Amazingly, however, things used to be worse. In the latest annual Local Environmental Quality Survey of England (LEQSE), published by environment charity Keep Britain Tidy last October, there was an increase in the overall cleanliness of the country, with more sites meeting acceptable standards.

But the survey expressed concern about an increase in the amount of litter created by cigarettes, fast food, soft drinks, sweet and chocolate bar wrappers and crisps packets.

‘It is a modern day scourge,’ said Phil Barton, chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy. ‘Litter remains a serious and expensive problem, costing over £1bn every year to taxpayers in England, with another £3bn in indirect costs to health, property values and in crime.’

He said a change in lifestyle – and a change in smoking laws – had made it difficult to combat littering in the past few years.

‘Despite considerable efforts by those charged with managing our streets and public spaces, the amount of litter has broadly held its own over the last decade, as better local management and enforcement has been offset by social and economic changes including the continued rise of fast food on the go and the indoor smoking ban.’

He added: ‘Everyone has a part to play in the solution; the individuals who drop litter, companies, local authorities, schools, the media – everyone – as no one can solve the problem on their own.’

Keep Britain Tidy, which was formed 60 years ago, wants more government action on litter instead of leaving it to local authorities. Some councils hand out hundreds of fines a year for littering, while others tread more carefully because of negative publicity – fines given to people for accidentally dropping a pen or a bank card or feeding bread to a pigeon haven’t helped matters. More than 63,000 fines were handed out in councils in England in 2012.

But Samantha Harding, manager of the Stop the Drop anti-litter campaign run by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), would like to see more fines handed out to deter litter bugs.

‘You shouldn’t be dropping anything, whether it’s a cigarette butt or a huge black sack of rubbish,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be doing it and it is illegal and you are subject to getting a fine if you do so.’

She said the money spent on cleaning up litter is at an unacceptable level.

‘We’re nowhere near as clean as we should be. It costs, in England alone, £1bn a year to clean up. And we’re not picking everything up. That billion pounds doesn’t mean you look around and we’re spotless – we’re only barely getting on top of it and we’re wasting a billion pounds. For those people who think, “Oh, it’s the council’s job, people would lose jobs if I didn’t drop it…” – that is just a ridiculous attitude.’

England and Scotland are in the process of following the lead of Northern Ireland and Wales by introducing a levy on plastic carrier bags. Scotland’s own charge will arrive in October, but England’s plan – recently branded a ‘complete mess’ by a committee of MPs – will not come into force until next year. It has been criticised for being over-complicated by the CPRE, which says more than 10bn bags will be given out in England before the government implements the new legislation.

‘Carrier bags aren’t the biggest litter problem but they tend to have quite a big impact on wildlife,’ said Harding. ‘Once they get into waterways and the marine world, carrier bags are really dangerous.

‘Cigarette butts are the most littered item but when you’re walking through the countryside or your local park or your streetscape, you might not notice a cigarette butt. But if there’s a big blue carrier bag flying from a tree or a bright red can lying on the ground, you’re going to notice that.’

The CPRE runs Litter Action, compromising 600 community groups of people who are quite literally taking Britain’s litter problem into their own hands, coming together to rid their areas of waste through regular collections.

Harding said these groups regularly pick up litter tossed from vehicles after visits to fast food drive-thru services. Food and drinks companies have been criticised as it’s their packaging that ends up decorating Britain’s streets. But earlier this month, McDonald’s, KFC, Coca-Cola and Wrigley all signed up to a new anti-litter pledge established by Keep Britain Tidy.

‘Some of the companies are open to it and realise their products cause a problem and they want to be part of the solution,’ said Harding. ‘I agree with them in the sense that it’s not their fault that people are dropping their products, but they can be a part of the solution in relation to messaging and their packaging.’

But in the end, the people dropping the litter is us, perhaps out of laziness, perhaps out of ignorance. Either way, it’s not big and it’s not clever.

‘Maybe we’re naturally hardwired to deposit stuff and just to carry on doing something else,’ said Harding. ‘To get people to stop doing that is quite difficult.’